


Safe With Me

by yespolkadot_kitty



Series: Nightingale Verse [3]
Category: The Equalizer (Movies)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Smut, THE DAVE YORK PIT, nightingale verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:54:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25674661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yespolkadot_kitty/pseuds/yespolkadot_kitty
Summary: From a tumblr request: First off, I LOVE you to bits. Second, I LOVE being in the Dave York pit with you guys. Thirdly, a random Dave request if possible. Dave is finishing a job and ends up saving a young woman who was in the process of being attacked by a mugger. He escorts her home and mayyyyybe she shows him some appreciation for saving her life 😍
Relationships: Dave York/Reader, Dave York/You
Series: Nightingale Verse [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1845097
Comments: 7
Kudos: 30





	Safe With Me

3am.

York balls up the blood-stained t-shirt he’s yanked off, pushes off the thin latex gloves. A random dumpster in an alleyway catches his eye, and he glances around. It’s a good few feet from any of the streetlamps. Perfect.

He tosses the clothes; pulls a new t-shirt out of his go-bag, shrugs it on. The night is balmy and now he looks like any other tourist after a night propping up one bar or another - plain t-shirt and jeans, big backpack. 

He’s learned how to dissemble his MK12 silently, and wraps it in spare clothes to bulk out the backpack. He ruffles a hand through his hand, pulls a souvenir bottle of whiskey from his pocket, douses himself in it. Now he  _ smells _ like he’d been propping up a bar, too.

The streetlamps shine pale halos on to the pavement as he walks, his mind carefully blank. He never thinks about his kills afterwards. What’s the point?

It crosses his mind that he didn’t get injured this time, so he won’t need her. Florence.

Their relationship - is it a relationship? - confounds and humbles him.

York doesn’t kid himself that she probably wouldn’t look twice at him on the subway; or at a speed dating night. Theirs is a connection born out of necessity, but even so, he’s reached for her more than once after a nightmare jerked him upright in bed; jacked off to the memory of her soft skin when he’s alone in the shower.

So when he hears her voice, he’s  _ almost _ convinced that he’s dreaming it.

“Stop. Stop!”

York rounds the corner on silent feet - years of training have taught him to move without being seen or heard.

And there she is. Florence, but not as he knows her. She wears a light sweater; a messenger bag slung over her shoulder. Two guys cage her in - both taller, way broader than her. One looks like he’s holding a shiv. York would’ve snorted in disgust if it didn’t put him in danger of being given away.

He assesses the scene for a moment.

“Please,” Florence is saying. “Please. You can take anything I have.”

_ Over my dead body, _ York thinks. Florence has saved him, and now the universe has seen fit for him to receive a chance to return the favour.

He reaches into the waistband of his jeans, palms his little Beretta. Aims; shoots the side of the dumpster to the left of Bozo #1.

The asshat yelps; and from this angle it looks as if he pisses himself. York smiles without humour. He settles in behind the postbox, watches, waits. 

“What the  _ fuck _ was that?” Bozo #2 yells, and grabs Florence by the throat. 

She gasps.

_ And that’s enough. _

York shoves the Beretta back into his waistband and rounds the postbox. Bozo #1 never sees him coming and with a flick of York’s wrist, the man is out for the count, dropping like a stone to the tarmac. He’ll have a hell of a headache come tomorrow.

Bozo #2 sees his buddy fall and yanks Florence against him, the pathetic little shiv half a foot from her neck.

“Who’s there?” he demands.

Florence stays perfectly still.  _ She knows, _ York thinks. The doc has been working with black ops soldiers for three years; she’d recognise one anywhere.

There are no streetlights in this alley, so the darkness works to York’s advantage. He presses himself against the wall, regulates his breathing. He could fire another warning shot, but this wannabe gangster’s hand is shaking so bad that a jerk of his arm might harm Florence.

And hurting Florence is a  _ hard _ line that York will never, ever cross.

He slides a hand slowly into his jean pocket, feels for the little knife; it’s there. He palms it, breathes in and out, slow and steady, and aims. He can see just peachy in the dark thanks to all that murder training.

York hurls the knife. It slams into the meat of Bozo #2’s thigh. No artery has been hit, but he’ll probably have a scar.

Bozo #2 yelps as his leg collapses under him and he crumples to the dry, dirty concrete. The shiv drops to the ground too, clattering.

Florence surges forward and without thinking York grabs for her, wraps his arms around her.  _ She’s fine. She’s fine. _

“It’s me,” he murmurs when she jerks in panic, and when she turns her face up to look at him, he’s struck by her beauty, her eyes flashing in the nearby gleam from the blinking lights of an ATM.

“David.”

God, he loves it when she calls him that. No one else does. It’s like their secret language.

Uncaring about what happens to Bozos #1 or #2, he takes her hand, leads her away. “What were you doing out here, so late?”

Florence gives him the side eye. “Patching up under-the-table guys isn’t my only job.”

“Right.”

“I was leaving the hospital. Pulled a double shift.” Her fingers clench in his. He should let her hand go, but he doesn’t.

“And you didn’t think to drive?” he wishes he could bite the very father-like comment back.

“I like walking at night.”

He gets it. People like them thrive in the darkness. It’s how they justify what they do. Florence, not so much, but York, yes. He belongs in the dark, doesn’t deserve to see the light after the lives he’s taken.

“I’ll walk you home,” he says into the balmy night air.

She doesn’t disagree. She doesn’t ask where he’s been; she probably knows.

Five minutes later, they reach her building, a modest mid-century brownstone with what York supposes is good-enough security. Perhaps he’ll come by one night and replace the camera with a better one.

Florence digs her key from her pocket. “So, this is me.”

York shakes his head. “Uh- uh. I’ll come in, clear your place.”

He can’t see, for sure, but it seems like she rolls her eyes just a little, but she doesn’t argue.

They take the steps together.

“I’m not sure you knowing where I live is part of the arrangement McCall made,” she says, a bit breathlessly.

“Your secret’s safe with me.”

“I know it is,  _ David. _ ” She thumbs through the keys and selects the one for Number 12, offers it to him.

He slides it into the lock soundlessly, pockets the little curve of metal and then plucks the beretta from the small of his back, holding it ahead of him.

Florence is silent behind.

When he’s cleared her small apartment, she closes the door, looks up into his eyes. “Thankyou. For what you did.”

Her gratitude makes him uncomfortable. “No problem. Those jerks gave me an opportunity to clear the red in my ledger.”

Florence’s gaze goes soft. “David-” She lifts her hand to his cheek. Her lips part, slightly.

And then he’s on her like a starving man being given a taste of food after too, too long. He shoves his backpack off his shoulder as Florence’s arms wind around his neck, and he licks into her mouth, desperate. Wanting to show without words how  _ fucking delirious _ with happiness he is that she’s here, alive. He tucks his hands under her ass, lifts her up, backs them into the door, as she winds her legs around his hips.

His name falls from her lips like a supplication to whatever God is listening as he starts to ravage her neck, using his tongue and teeth to pull moans and sighs from her. Her hands tunnel into his hair and he thinks  _ I need her more than I need air, _ and he bucks his hips into the sweet softness of her, and even though they’re both clothed, he feels the tingle of an orgasm start at the base of his spine.

“David…”

He looks up.

“You smell like whiskey.”

“Decoy,” he mutters. 

“Shower,” she says with a raised brow.

He grunts a response; doesn’t bother putting her down, but carries her through the apartment. The bathroom door is open which makes it easier. He begrudges it but he sets Florence down gently, as if she’ll break if he treats her like anything save fine china, and then she blows that image away by falling on him, tearing at his clothes, yanking his t-shirt over his head. He fumbles at her clothing, feeling like a man who has won the lottery and is cursed all at the same time. He has been inside this woman, but not like  _ this. _ Not skin to skin, not like they’re about to be, with the hot water rushing over their bodies.

Florence shoves his jeans down and then kneels, unlacing his combat boots. He steps out of them, meets her gaze, sees the fire dancing in his eyes.

Naked, he pulls her into the shower as she turns the water on hot. The spray slicks their bodies, and Florence mouths at the hollow of his throat, her tongue laving his skin.

York explores the curves and valleys of her eagerly with his hands; he knows they’re gun-calloused, rough in places, but her cat-like mewls tell him she likes it. When one of her small hands slides down to cup him intimately, he feels himself jerk in her grasp, and she  _ purrs. _

Who knew Dr Nightingale could be so naughty?  _ Fuck, _ it’s hot,  _ she _ is hot, and he’s going to lose it like an untried boy if he isn’t careful.

Florence kisses her fingertips down the scar on his chest; the one she stitched just before the first, and only time, they made love, when she rode him carefully, so slowly he thought he’d die from the tension in his balls.

“David.” She then kisses the scar, and his knees go weak for a moment. New wetness streaks down his chest - different texture to the shower, and he realises with horror that she’s crying.

He cups her face, looks into her eyes. 

“Don’t cry. Sweetheart, don’t cry.”

“You mustn’t put yourself in danger for me,” she hiccups out, pressing her face into his neck. “What happens when the music stops?”

York swallows hard.  _ I don’t know how many songs I have left. _ That’s what he’d said to her, that first time. Maybe he wishes he could take the words back.

“I would put myself in danger for you every second,” he rasps into her ear. “For you - anything. Everything.”

She is silent for a moment that stretches; the only sound the rushing water. Then, “Please.  _ Please. _ ”

And he kneels down, bracing his hands on her hips and makes love to her with his mouth, for how long, he doesn’t know. He drinks in the taste of her, licking and sucking, learning just where to use his teeth to make her fist her hands in his hair, sob his name brokenly. When he stands up, holding her to him, her legs shake, and she kisses him fiercely, desperately, breaking apart only to fill her hands with strawberry soap. When she wraps her palms around him, stroking, taking her time to learn every move that makes him gasp, every twist of her fist that has him gulping him, she wrings an orgasm so powerful from him that he swears he blacks out, just for a second.

They dry each other off gently, silently, and when Florence leads him to her bed, he should say no. He should go home. He should get as far away from her as possible. She isn’t a killer, shouldn’t be tarnished by the blood on his hands. So much blood.

But he lets her wrap herself around him, and he holds her tightly, so tightly he might leave marks, but her hair smells of strawberries, and she might be the only pure thing he has left in this world.

He holds her all night long.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
